Commissioners gouge residents by failing to collect impact fees

So far, Lake County commissioners quietly have stuck property owners with a $36 million bill that will come due in a few years. And to make it worse, they're now poised to jack up the price.

What they did was to stop collecting impact fees in 2011 and begin collecting only a quarter of them in January. Students coming here in the past three years created the need for $36 million worth of classroom space, but in the name of "stimulating the economy," commissioners decided not to charge the newcomers.

Since, after all, this is not a theoretical expense — it's all too real — guess who gets to pay the full cost of building that space?

You.

Suspending impact-fee collections doesn't mean that new schools won't get built or cafeterias won't be renovated to handle bigger crowds or more buses won't be purchased to pick up the new children.

It is just a way to shift the cost from newcomers to current residents, and it's time to recognize that. Lake County property owners will be forced to pay for these costs because county commissioners lack the political will to stand up to loud developers, who want to keep prices low so they can sell houses and who contribute heavily to commission campaigns.

Don't let commissioners fool you into thinking that they're trying to help the economy. That's bogus. The truth is that they don't want to take on developers — they'd rather stick it to you because you don't squeal so loudly.

Part of the blame goes to the Lake County School Board, which spent a couple of years muttering under its collective breath but didn't have the courage to demand commissioners charge the full fee of $10,292 for each home. But finally, board members voted 5-0 in late June to do it. Never mind that the chairman said she "forgot" to send the request to commissioners until nearly six weeks later.

The commissioners last week passed the hot potato on to a committee, one that has examined this question only about 10,292 times. That was just a stall tactic. And while they all diddle around for months more, the amount of impact fees they leave on the table only increases.

Here's how it will play out: One random day, a School Board agenda will contain a one-line item asking members to approve borrowing even more money than the district already has to build a new school. They'll moan and blame commissioners.

This is not tricky to predict because School Board members did precisely the same thing in the run-up to the real-estate bust of 2008. The result is that residents of this county are paying off $600 million in bonds because elected officials couldn't find the grit to do what was needed. It is time to learn something from the past.

County Commissioner Welton Cadwell probably was right when he said he expects the board will institute a fee "somewhere in the middle." That's because Commissioner Leslie Campione will fight for her friends the developers to get rid of the fees altogether — thereby throwing the cost on the general public.

In a lengthy email, Campione explained why she believes impact fees are unfair. And she proposed some other solutions, including creation of high-growth districts where the fee would be collected and others where it wouldn't.

She also said, "New schools could be built using a variety of mechanisms, and it would be the responsibility of the developers to formulate a plan in conjunction with the School District to get a new school or new classrooms built before proceeding with their development."

They could do that by building a new school and leasing it to the district, she suggested. Or "a developer could obtain financing for the new school and then be paid back over time."

Oh, there's a plan that couldn't possibly go wrong. Any old developer has access to $30 million for an elementary, right? And since when did it become the developers' responsibility to build schools?

Let's remember that Campione and her anti-impact-fee followers have had three years to come up with a better plan while fee collection was suspended, and they didn't. Their plan is to carry on and balk like mules — and then to stall, stall, stall.

The next project on the schools' list to be paid through impact fees is a new school in the Four Corners area that is projected to cost $31.5 million. It could have been completely paid for today if impact fees had been collected as they should have been. Instead, Lake County taxpayers will be saddled with most of the expense in the coming years.

Here's the bottom line: Elected officials need to find some fortitude and pay for these schools in some way — any way — that doesn't force people who live in this county today to pay for them. Growth should pay for itself, regardless of the cost. That's too bad if it means lopping a room off a McMansion.

In the meantime, commissioners should vote to collect 100 percent of the impact fee. Perhaps that will inspire one of the naysayers to get things moving. As it is, time is on their side.

Lritchie@tribune.com. Lauren invites you to send her a friend request on Facebook at facebook.com/laurenonlake.